Your Army continues to go rolling along:
1,700 Soldiers in Kosovo
1,700 Soldiers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
200 Soldiers in Saudi Arabia/Bahrain
680 Soldiers in the Sinai
18,000 Soldiers in Afghanistan
180,000 Soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait
1,700 Soldiers in the Horn of Africa
And they are busy, serving you well and making you proud…
Terrorists in Iraq recentlyfelt the wrath.
BAGHDAD , Iraq – Coalition forces killed 12 terrorists during a raid April 25 in Yusifiyah at a safe house associated with foreign terrorists. Multiple intelligence sources led the troops to the specific structure located approximately 8 kilometers N/NE of the location where the U.S. Apache helicopter crashed April 1.
Upon arrival the troops took direct fire and immediately engaged the threat with small arms fire as well as rotary wing aircraft machine gun fire. The troops initially killed five terrorists outside of the safe house, and then called for an air strike to neutralize the persistent direct fire coming from the safe house.
After the precision air strike, the ground troops conducted a tactical search of the destroyed safe house and located the bodies of seven more terrorists and a woman. Every male who was found in the rubble was wearing an AK-47 vest with two loaded magazines and two grenades. The troops also discovered suicide notes on one of the terrorists, body bombs, weapons to include a shoulder-fired rocket and ammunition.
American aviators are training Afghan aviators to fly helicopters and fly them tactically with the goal of eventually taking over the mission in the Stan. This is the next critical step in phasing out U.S. forces from the region and standing up Afghan forces to secure their own nation. Just as in Iraq, we’ve been able to stand up combat forces allowing for them to take over the mission, but combat support units like aviation are much more challenging to train and resource, but challenges are what your Soldiers thrive on.
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (Army News Service, April 24, 2006) – Afghan National Army aviators recently completed their first combat-support mission in partnership with the Coalition’s Task Force Falcon.
Two Afghan National Army Air Corps crews arrived at the airfield April 10, completed several days of training and then flew supplies aboard their Mi-17 Hip helicopters to Afghan and U.S. forces in Jalalabad.
Afghan and Coalition participants are calling the mission a success.
The first group of Afghan aviators conducted after-action reviews to identify areas in which they could improve, and then continued to fly missions for the remainder of their 10-day stay, Serota said. A second group was scheduled to replace them as soon as they departed.
“The goal is to get them up every single day doing aerial movements,” to prepare them to share the aviation-operations load with the Coalition, Serota said.
“We want to rely on the Afghan Air Corps, to be able to give them a mission, or part of a ring route, and have them plan, coordinate and execute it themselves,” he continued.
Nobody comes close to what your Army Corps of Engineers are achieving.
Formerly was known as Saddam City, Sadr City has always been a low-income section. Neglected under the former regime and occasionally punished for challenging Saddam Hussein’s rule, the city is among the most impoverished and neglected in the country.
The run-down city of more than two million inhabitants was in urgent need of essential services. Broken pipes allowed both untreated and sewage water to inundate the streets. This water also seeped into the pure water supplies through leaky pipes. Streets were unpaved and mounds of garbage and debris were piled up in most of the neighborhoods of the city.
Concerning water projects, the Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region Division, has completed about 27 compact water unit projects. Each of these water units produces 15,000 liters of clean drinking water daily in the city which helps to improve the living condition of all of the residents in Sadr city.
There is a group of mostly unseen Soldiers in your Army that peform one of the most difficult, yet important jobs around, especially during wartime; the mortuary affairs Soldiers.
SATHER AIR BASE, Iraq (Army News Service, April 24, 2006) – Tucked away in an obscure building at Sather Air Base, a group of Soldiers hopes today is a slow one.
Although most people like to have lots of work, these Puerto Rico Army Reserve Soldiers are content not to have business. When they are busy, it means someone has died.
Although there is no requirement to do so, the team leads a brief ceremony as they load the remains onto the aircraft to pay respect for the individual’s service. They and volunteers carry the flag-draped transfer case onto the aircraft while a small military formation presents a final salute.
“The (person) made the greatest sacrifice for the cause,” said Mendezvega. “I try to go every time and pay my respects.”
Your citizen Soldiers continue to answer the call to duty, and the 294th Infantry Regiment out of Guam have done just that.
FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii – Soldiers from the Guam Army National Guard’s newly formed Co. C 1st 294th Infantry Regiment spent a tough week training tirelessly for their upcoming deployment to Africa in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
It was a challenging week for the troops, from joint operations exercises and stress firing to convoy operations and more.
“The biggest threat in theater comes in convoys,” said Capt. Kristen Graham, the engineer team chief in charge of the convoy exercise.
“The Soldiers reacted to sniper attacks and improvised explosive device attacks, as well as reorganization skills afterwards,” she added.
Stress firing is a technique in which Soldiers’ bodies are pushed to the limit, and then they fire their weapons to get an idea of the physical and mental strain of battle.
Near and dear to my heart, the CH47D Chinook continues to be the workhorse throughout today’s battlspace.
CAMP TAJI, Iraq (Army News Service, April 24, 2006) – To Soldiers on the front lines in Iraq, the delivery of supplies is critical to sustaining a force spread over 17,000 square miles.
The 4th Infantry Division’s Combat Aviation Brigade CH-47 Chinook helicopters have become a major factor in ensuring repair parts, mail and other much-needed materiel reach its intended destinations.
To date, CAB aircraft have delivered more than 7.7 million pounds of cargo and more than 60,800 passengers to locations throughout Iraq since taking over Multi-National Division – Baghdad’s aviation mission four months ago. Of these passengers, more than 40,000 have traveled aboard the brigade’s CH-47 Chinooks.
The Chinooks are assigned to Company B, 2nd Battalion, 4th Aviation Regiment, and have been solely responsible for bringing a heavy-lift capability to the fight. Because the Chinook pilots have flown more than 2,000 hours and delivered more than 3,800 tons of materiel, Coalition Forces have been able to keep more than 1,400 trucks off the roadways. This action has also kept an estimated 3,541 Soldiers out of harm’s way.
And our comrades in arms, the Soldiers to the north, are themselves serving proudly in Afghanistan.
No one knows better than the coalition soldiers in Afghanistan why Afghanistan needs coalition soldiers. They see it and live it every day, on every patrol, every convoy excursion along Highway 1 — the soldiers call its forbidding stretches, variously, Michelob and Whiskey and Miller — that can so abruptly swerve from routine to chaotic, every probing from a forward operating base, every report of another roadside explosion or suicide bombing.
And they suck it up, as no Canadian civilian can, at every solemn “ramp ceremony” for a fallen comrade, regardless of nationality. Four more, now, of those. And four coffins transported home to grieving families.
In Afghanistan, in quiet late-night conversations over cigarettes, I never heard a single soldier speak of regrets or mission misgivings.
Just a snapshot of your Army as it rolls along, defending freedom and our way of life. Thank you ever so much for the undying support that you provide, it is the fuel your Soldiers rely on. Sgt Hook out.
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